text: Atta-ur-Rahman was born on 22 September 1942 in Old Delhi into an Urdu-speaking academic family. His grandfather, Sir Abdur Rahman, was a vice-chancellor of the University of Delhi (1934–38) who briefly served as a judge at the Madras High Court.
  In 1946, Abdur Rahman was appointed as vice-chancellor of the Punjab University in Lahore, eventually relocating his family there, a year before the partition of India took place. Abdur Rahman eventually became a Senior Justice at the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1949. His father, Jamil-ur-Rahman, was a lawyer who established a cotton ginning textile industry in Okara, Punjab, Pakistan. After settling in Karachi in 1952, he passed the competitive O-Level and A-Level from the Karachi Grammar School and joined Karachi University.
  Attending Karachi University in 1960, Rahman graduated with a bachelors degree (with honors) in chemistry in 1963. He obtained a Master of Science (MSc) in organic chemistry in 1964 with first class and 1st position, and lectured at Karachi University for a year before receiving a Commonwealth Scholarship for doctoral studies in the United Kingdom. He joined Kings College at the University of Cambridge and resumed research in natural products under John Harley-Mason. In 1968, Rahman received a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in organic chemistry; the subjects of his doctoral thesis were natural products and organic materials. He was elected as a fellow of Kings College, University of Cambridge in 1969 and continued his research at Cambridge University until 1973. During that period, he is credited with correcting the earlier work of the Nobel Laureate Sir Robert Robinson on the chemistry of harmaline. Later in 2007, he was appointed as an honorary life fellow of Kings College Cambridge.